


Too Fragile

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Hospitalization, M/M, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1734032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint woke up slowly, his mind clouded, sluggish and numb, as if he’d been hit over the head repeatedly with a metal pole. </p><p>Which, if he remembered correctly, he had been. </p><p>(Prompt: I want Clint in traction. Multiple broken bones. Surgery. Weird scary external fixators. And Clint freaking out internally but trying to play it cool for Natasha or Coulson or both.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Fragile

**Author's Note:**

> Um, so this is a horrible fic, and I'm so, so sorry anon. I'm so sorry. But, well, here it is. Try not to kill me. 
> 
> Trigger Warnings: Severe injury

Clint woke up slowly. In fact, for a few moments he was unsure if he was awake at all, due to the way his mind was clouded, sluggish and numb, as if he’d been hit over the head repeatedly with a metal pole. 

Which, if he remembered correctly, he had been. 

Well, he hadn’t been hit by a metal pole, per say, but he had been hit by the sharp edges of over forty stairs after he’d been hit by an enemy’s bullet. Which, he realized groggily, meant that he was technically in the hospital – because that’s where he had to be, what with these bright white walls and slowly beeping machinery – because he _fell down the stairs._ Clint would have laughed if it hadn’t been so goddamn painful. 

“Hey,” a soft voice said from somewhere to his left, and Clint felt a hand stroke his hair gently. 

“Hey,” Clint replied, his voice rough, as he tried to move his head to look at Natasha who he suspected was on his left, but it was a little difficult to tell at the moment. “How badly did I fuck up the mission?”

“It was fine,” Natasha said, shaking her head, and even though her tone was soft, Clint couldn’t help but wince at the volume, his head throbbing. “Clint? Are you – ”

“‘m fine,” Clint muttered, closing his eyes for a moment, his jaw clenched tightly. 

He was trying not to panic, if he was being completely honest. Despite all of the painkillers that were clouding his consciousness, his head still hurt like hell, the room was starting to spin, and he could feel the beginnings of a horrible headache coming on even through all the meds. The most unnerving part, though, was that he was having trouble focusing on Natasha. She was a sort of vague blur and looking at her – or trying to look at her – was starting to worsen his headache.

“You’re _fine?_ ” Natasha snapped, her sudden volume change making Clint nearly whimper as he screwed his eyes tighter shut and tried to will the throbbing in his brain away. “You nearly – ”

She cut herself off as someone knocked on the door before a middle aged Japanese woman walked in carrying a clipboard wither her. Clint knew she was a doctor and that he’d seen her around SHIELD many times, but he couldn’t remember her name. Which might have had to do with the fact that he was concussed last time he’d seen her. 

Ow. Maybe he was concussed again. 

“Well, it’s good to see you conscious, at least, Agent Barton,” she said, smiling pleasantly, although Clint was momentarily distracted as he saw Coulson walk in behind her, the tension abruptly bleeding out of him at the sight of the other man. “How are you feeling?”

“‘m fine,” Clint said again before scrunching up his nose, because he was having a bizarre sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t she just asked him that? Or had someone else?

“Honey, if you want me to believe that, you’re going to have to start looking a little less green around the gills,” she said, and she had a nametag on, but Clint couldn’t even begin to read it, the letters making his head spin. “Now, how long have you been having low back pain?”

It took Clint a moment to interpret what she’d said. His mind was running sluggishly and he felt like he was in a sort of fog. Once he finally realized what she’d asked him, though, he felt his cheeks heat and he tried to think of any possible excuse to give her. 

“I dunno. A long time,” he admitted, his eyes still closed, both to keep his headache to a minimum and to avoid Natasha and Coulson’s reactions. “Didn’t think it was a big deal. Figured I’d just pulled something.” 

“You were in the circus when you were younger, weren’t you?” the doctor asked, making Clint frown, because what did that have to do with anything?

“Well, yeah,” he answered, his lips pursed. “I left when I was about seventeen.” 

“Did you do any acrobatics? Anything from summersaults to trapeze,” she continued, and he had absolutely no clue what she was getting at now. 

“Some. I had to for my act,” Clint mumbled. 

“Congratulations, then. You have spondylolisthesis,” she said, and Clint would have a difficult enough time with a word that long when he was concussed. “Spondy for short. It starts as a stress fracture of the lower spine, but that fall of yours completely broke your vertebra and pushed it out of place. We’re going to have to – ”

Clint looked over to Coulson for any sort of help interpreting this, but as he glanced over, his eyes landed on his handler’s tie. The one with the zigzag-y little patterns and – and –

Clint rolled over onto his side and threw up. 

He was vaguely aware of a sharp pain in his back, along with the fact that he’d just barely missed his handler’s shoes. He heard the doctor mutter a few curses under her breath as she helped steady him as she finished puking up whatever it was he’d last eaten (he couldn’t remember exactly what). It took a few more heaves before he felt like he could roll back over, and as he did so he was abruptly aware of a strange contraption – a brace, probably – forcing his back into rigid straightness. 

“So, headache, dizziness, more nausea?” the doctor said after a moment, her voice gloriously quieter than it was before. 

Clint nodded vaguely, his throat still hurting slightly from the acidity of the goop he’d just regurgitated. He saw her lean towards Natasha, murmuring something to her, and a moment later Natasha stood up and lowered the lights, nearly causing Clint to let out an audible sigh of relief. On his other side, Coulson had already stooped down to clean up some of the vomit off the floor, which Clint had the decency to feel a little bad about, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t done the same for his handler before. 

“Well, the good thing is that your MRI came back relatively normal,” the doctor continued, Clint blinking at her owlishly. “Well, your brain MRI. Your spinal one wasn’t exactly pretty.”

“MRI?” Clint croaked, although he wasn’t entirely sure the doctor heard him because his voice was disturbingly weak. 

“We had one done while you were unconscious,” Coulson explained, having finished cleaning up the mess on the floor and now sitting in the chair right next to his bedside, looking at him like he was about to crumble into dust on the hospital bed. 

“But it was normal,” Clint repeated, looking over at the doctor this time. 

“Yes, it was normal,” she said, nodding, which reassured Clint less than he thought it would, “but I only mean normal in the sense that there was no major internal bleeding or obvious tissue damage. You’re still concussed, which means that we can’t risk operating on your spine quite yet. Thankfully, although your spinal MRI was messy, as long as we keep you in that brace and you don’t do anything to worsen your situation, you’ll avoid major nerve damage.” 

And okay, he’d gotten the first bit – something about not being able to operate yet because of the concussion – but the rest was clouded in a haze as the room continued to spin. 

“Barton?” a strangely comforting voice asked, and Clint blinked blearily at Coulson, trying not to look at his tie, which was still horribly zigzag-y and making him feel vaguely nauseous. 

“I…” Clint started, but that was all he was able to get out, unsure exactly what he was supposed to say. “Never mind.” 

He still was having trouble focusing his vision and Coulson, for the most part, just looked like a fuzzy mess. He was vaguely aware of the doctor murmuring something softly to Coulson – something that he wasn’t really able to make out – before the other agent nodded and she left, Natasha following behind her. Which, of course, left just the two of them in the hospital room. 

“You should get some rest,” Coulson said softly, quietly enough and in that soothing voice of his that made Clint wan to pull him into the bed and curl up against his chest.

Which, of course, was wildly inappropriate and completely unacceptable for him to want from his boss.

He looked at Coulson for a moment longer before obediently closing his eyes and trying to think about anything other than the warm presence just a few feet away from him. He was nearly out again when he felt a familiarly callused hand clutch his own, Coulson twining their fingers together. 

Clint really hoped that the heart rate monitor he was connected to didn’t reflect the way his pulse sped up. 

\---

“He’s going to be okay.” 

Coulson glanced back over his shoulder at Natasha who was standing just in the doorway, her arms crossed firmly across her chest as she looked between the two men in the hospital room pointedly. 

“You don’t know that for certain,” he replied, unable to help himself. 

“It’s Clint,” she said, as if that made up for everything – for the monitors that he was strapped up to, for the brace wrapped around him, and the pained winces that he tried to hide every time he was woken up to make sure that he hadn’t slipped fully into irreversible unconsciousness. 

Natasha knew this, of course. In fact, she was probably trying to convince herself more than she was him. 

“Which is why I worry so much,” Coulson muttered.

He clutched Clint’s hand a little tighter and for a moment he imagined that Clint squeezed back.


End file.
